Optical properties and laser performance of Nd:Y2O3 ceramics with fine-grained microstructure

Transparent neodymium doped Y2O3 ceramics is adopted for use in high power solid-state lasers due to their superior thermal characteristics compared to YAG ceramics. To fabricate highly transparent Y2O3 ceramics, the microstructural evolution was investigated in this study via hot-pressing followed by a HIP treatment while controlling the composition of the sintering additive and hot-pressing temperature. Without a sintering additive, the grain growth was vigorous as hot-pressing temperature increased and led to coarsening-dominated sintering trajectories with various residual pore sizes. Densification increased with the composition of the Zr and La co-doped additive, leading to a fine-grained microstructure (∼0.94 μm) after the HIP treatment. Thus, the prepared Nd:Y2O3 ceramics presented optical and laser properties comparable to those of conventional Nd:Y2O3 ceramics.